Why Brain Balance is our future
This article is a direct message from Dr. Olivia Geen, Aldora’s founder. Learn more about Dr. Geen here.
“You and a friend are having a picnic by the side of a river. Suddenly you hear a shout from the direction of the water - a child is drowning. Without thinking, you both dive in, grab the child, and swim to shore. Before you can recover, you hear another child cry for help. You and your friend jump back in the river to rescue her as well. Then another struggling child drifts into sight… and another… and another. The two of you can barely keep up. Suddenly, you see your friend wading out of the water, seeming to leave you alone. “Where are you going?” you demand. Your friend answers, “I’m going upstream to tackle the guy who’s throwing all these kids in the water” - from Upstream, by Dan Heath, adapted from the original parable commonly attributed to Irving Zola.
You don’t have to work in Canadian healthcare to see that the system is stretched past its limits. We do reasonably well with emergencies, but we falter when it comes to chronic illness and long-term care. Every winter’s flu surge reveals how thin the margin is. The cracks are no longer subtle.
This imbalance has concerned me for over a decade - first quietly in medical school, then more loudly as an internal medicine resident, and eventually as a near-constant roar during my geriatric medicine fellowship.
The hallways of our hospitals are lined with older adults - frail, confused, and often suffering from dementia. For many of these individuals, their hospital stay is a fog of disorientation, indignity, and preventable harm. Not every moment of dementia is painful, of course. But I found myself increasingly uneasy with a system that - despite good intentions - was producing outcomes marked by unnecessary suffering.
I didn’t enter medicine to chase immortality. We will all die, healthy or not, at 125 years or less. What I did hope for was the ability to help people feel better. And in many ways, I do. But it’s not enough.
What changed was my definition of “help.” I no longer wanted to rescue people after they’d fallen in the river - wet, frightened, and half-drowned. I wanted to keep them from falling in at all.
From Crisis Care to Brain Balance
Fortunately, I came to this realization at a time when the science of dementia prevention was undergoing a quiet revolution. Just ten years earlier, suggesting that dementia could be prevented might have cost me my credibility. Today, it’s not only acceptable to talk about prevention - it’s essential.
The Lancet has now published major reports in 2017, 2020, and 2024 estimating that at least 45% of the world’s dementia cases could be prevented through modifiable risk factors (read more here). In Canada, that number may be as high as 52% (read more here).
This is no longer a fringe idea. It is the new foundation of dementia medicine.
In my own clinical practice, I see the data reflected in real life. For every ten people I diagnose with dementia, only three have no identifiable risk factors. The other seven have between three to six risk factors from what we call The Aldora 18 - a comprehensive list of evidence-based and emerging contributors to cognitive decline.
What’s striking is how ordinary these risk factors are. A little high blood pressure here, a touch of untreated hearing loss there, combined with social withdrawal after retirement. Then comes a fall - not serious, but enough to shake the brain. Two years later, memory begins to fade.
These stories aren’t extraordinary. They are familiar.
Yet I also see patients in their 90s and even over 100 who show no signs of dementia. They tend to have good general health, a strong mindset, and yes - perhaps some favourable genetics. But genes are only a small part of the story. The vast majority of dementia arises not from genetics but from the cumulative effects of unbalanced habits over time.
Which brings us back to brain balance.
What Is Brain Balance?
Brain balance is the idea that memory loss occurs when the damage outweighs the brain’s ability to compensate. This balance - also called cognitive reserve - is influenced by everything from sleep, nutrition, and exercise, to hearing, social connection, and emotional wellbeing.
In people with strong reserves, even early damage from dementia proteins may not cause symptoms. But when risk factors stack up and cognitive reserve is low, symptoms emerge sooner, more severely, and are harder to reverse.
The exciting part is that the scales aren’t fixed. With the right interventions, we can tip them back. Sometimes, memory symptoms can be delayed or even reversed.
In this way, brain balance becomes a framework not only for prevention, but for hope.
For more information on Aldora’s Brain Balance framework, read this.
Going Upstream
Prevention doesn’t mean perfection. It means stacking the odds in your favour. According to one recent study, even people with early-stage dementia showed measurable improvement in memory scores after just 20 weeks of lifestyle changes (read more here). That’s not magic. That’s biology responding to attention, intention, and time.
This is what we focus on at Aldora: helping people shift upstream, toward a future that is proactive rather than reactive. Dementia is not inevitable. It is not a normal part of aging. And for many, it can be prevented.
The question is not whether it’s possible. The question is whether we’re willing to act while we still can.
In Closing
Every day, I ask myself the same question that I’ll ask you now: What would you do with more years of clear thinking, joyful conversation, and independence?
That is our mission at Aldora. To build balance before decline. To strengthen the brain before it struggles. To wade upstream and stop the fall.
Because brain balance is not just an idea - it’s our future.
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